


where does the good go?

by ihopethatyouburn



Category: Homeland
Genre: Catholicism, Character Study, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:28:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24763108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ihopethatyouburn/pseuds/ihopethatyouburn
Summary: "She laughs at the impact of her Catholic upbringing: it didn’t stop her from sinning, but she still carries the guilt around with her like an extra layer of clothing."Berlin, 2014-15: Carrie uses the church to come to terms with motherhood, and starts to believe that she's deserving of happiness.
Relationships: Carrie Mathison/Jonas Hollander
Comments: 4
Kudos: 7





	where does the good go?

**Author's Note:**

> This is really self-indulgent, but I’m pretty happy with how it came out. I am a very lapsed Catholic, so the atmospheric elements are mostly from my memory, with specific Bible verses lifted from Google. Sorry to any actual Catholics!
> 
> This concept was inspired in part by the pietà imagery of Carrie holding a sleeping Brody in the safe house in The Star, as well as this passage from a Sarah Ruhl play called In the Next Room: “Isn’t it strange about Jesus? That is to say, about Jesus being a man? For it is women who are eaten, who turn their bodies into food. I gave up my blood – there was so much blood – and I gave up my body – but I couldn’t feed her, could not turn my body into food, and she was so hungry. I suppose that makes me an inferior kind of woman and a very inferior kind of Jesus.”
> 
> Pietà is an umbrella term for art pieces, mostly sculpture, featuring Mary holding Jesus' dead body.
> 
> The title is taken from a song of the same name by Tegan and Sara.
> 
> Thanks for reading!

The smell of incense always brings Carrie back to all the Sunday mornings in her childhood when her mother dragged her and Maggie to church. Her father always refused to come along, or to participate in any of the weekly fights that consisted of forcing Carrie into a dress and tights and nice shoes in time for 9am mass. Instead he usually stood around giving his usual diatribe against the Catholic church. As early as Carrie can remember, up through the end of middle school, she and Maggie were expected to be in church on Sunday, and no amount of whining would change that, though Carrie certainly did try. Maggie usually ended up in Carrie’s room finding her dress shoes for her so they could get out the door on time. If they were good, they got diner pancakes afterwards, which was just about the only inducement that could drag Carrie out of bed. 

Carrie once tried to ask her mom why they couldn’t go to her friend’s church, where they had doughnuts after mass every week in the church basement, but she just replied witheringly that the Presbyterians had different rules than the Catholics.

Maggie took to the church’s teachings more than Carrie ever did, reveling in the simplicity of the rules laid out, a clear pathway to do good for others. Lent was her favorite time, even more so than Christmas and Easter: the pillars of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving were a fun challenge, as she announced self-righteously to Carrie every March. She donated her allowance every year to different faith-based charities, and took a masochistic kind of pride in giving up something big for the designated forty days, to mirror Jesus’ forty days spent wandering through the desert. The year Maggie was twelve and Carrie was nine, Maggie gave up dessert and spent every evening until Easter looking longingly at Carrie as she munched on her after-dinner Oreos.

“You know, you can have one, too,” Carrie said to her a week into this exchange, annoyed.

“No, I can’t,” Maggie replied condescendingly. “I gave up dessert for Lent, you know that. And God will be mad if I break the rules.”

Carrie didn’t point out that God probably had better things to do than monitor Maggie’s cookie intake, like take care of people who didn’t have anything to eat at all, only because she knew from experience that questioning God’s love and attention would result in a very hard punch in the arm.

Thank God Maggie’s travel soccer team had Sunday morning games starting when she was in eighth grade. Without the weekly dose of Jesus, she was much less annoying.

Although the morality never quite rubbed off on Carrie, mostly because she could never sit still for long enough to absorb a full Bible reading, let alone a homily, she enjoyed the music and the art scattered around the building: stained glass windows depicting scenes from different Bible stories, the statue of Mary cradling a dead Jesus post-crucifixion, and the nativity scene every Christmas. 

When she had to attend confession at seven in preparation for her First Communion, Carrie was terrified, mostly because Maggie had hyped up how scary the old priest was. But when she actually got into the confession booth, the priest was kind and gentle, and she left feeling lighter and happier after his blessing. It was the first truly positive experience she’d had at church: a weight off her shoulders and a reassurance that she was loved and forgiven.

+++++

When Carrie lands in Berlin with Franny just weeks short of Franny’s first birthday, she can’t for the life of her recall the last time she attended a mass that wasn’t also a wedding or funeral; certainly not since her own mother left. But her apartment is a couple blocks from a proper Catholic church, with steeples and a horrifying Jesus statue outside and bells that ring on the hour, every hour, eventually fading into background noise but never from her subconscious.

The first time she stops in, she’s just dropped Franny off at daycare and is on her way to work when she gets an email that her first meeting with Otto is cancelled. With the sudden extra hour in her morning, she decides to take advantage of the lax European workplace standards and take a detour to church across the street, where the organ music is calling to her. 

The mass is in German, which she doesn’t know a lot of yet, but the hymnal is conveniently separated into German and English sections, so she can follow along with the readings. The church isn’t crowded, typical for a weekday, but she can easily pick out the regulars, most of them little old ladies with canes tucked next to them in the pews, singing loudly and just a little off key. 

When it comes time for communion she walks slowly up the center aisle in time to the valiant organ music, a little self-conscious in her jeans, feeling like a fraud both because she’s under-dressed and because she hasn’t taken communion in just about twenty years. In front of the priest, who is short and white-haired and almost identical to her childhood memory of Father Tom, she opens her mouth to receive the host, feeling exceedingly vulnerable towards this man who is literally feeding her. Maybe he’s more generous because it’s a smaller mass and he’s not handing out communion for ten minutes straight, or he can just sense that she’s searching for something, but he raises his hand in a benediction after offering her the body of Christ, mirroring her slight bow as she replies, “Amen.”

She steps off to the right and stands in front of the altar for a couple of seconds, savoring the very specific sense-memory of incense and holy water and red wine from the goblet in the usher’s hand next to her, transporting her back to those Sundays with her mother and Maggie, pretending to be too good for it all but feeling a sense of calm and community even so.

She arrives at work ninety minutes late, but she has the protection of the hour meeting that was blocked off in her calendar, and no one says anything as she breezes in. The simple fact of her former CIA life created an aura of mystery around her that has so far remained intact; she’s probably helping her cause by showing up late, anyway. 

“Hey Carrie,” her assistant Nina greets her as she walks past Nina’s desk into her office.

“Hi,” she smiles, not really wanting to chat but also not wanting to play into the Germans’ stereotype of Americans as being unfriendly and opposed to small talk. “Did Otto call at all this morning?”

“No, he had another meeting scheduled offsite. But Jonas came by looking for you earlier.”

Jonas, the foundation’s in-house counsel, is smart and sweet and has red hair, and was surprisingly calm when she rejected his invitation for drinks a week ago. At first she wasn’t entirely sure that he’d meant it in a date-y way, or that she even wanted it to be meant in a date-y way. But there was definite chemistry and she liked his dry sense of humor that she’d taken a few weeks to pick up on, but was evident now that she knew him better. 

“I don’t think so,” she’d responded to his invite to try a new pub that was opening a few blocks away. Everyone in the office got along for the most part, even though Laura could be a little histrionic at times, but they weren’t the kind of coworkers who cared enough to spend time together after work, so it was probably a date. At the very least, it would mean something that they strayed further than the sandwich place two doors down, and Carrie was frankly too emotionally exhausted to decide what she wanted to happen.

“You have another guy lined up for later?” he joked, his smile not quite meeting his embarrassed eyes. 

“Oh, no, nothing like that.” Carrie genuinely laughed at the possibility of anything stable awaiting her. At least the date question had been answered in the affirmative. “I think my daughter finally realized that we’re not going home, that this is our home, and she’s stopped sleeping through the night. So I try to spend as much time with her after work as I can, to make sure she’s happy.” 

Not the exact truth – Franny could do without her for a couple hours, as long as Carrie put her to bed – but not a lie either, and Carrie saw Jonas’s face softening as she talked.

“The move must have been hard for her.” God, he was so infuriatingly sensitive and understanding. A little _too_ good, maybe. The jury was still out there. “How old is she again?”

“She just turned one a few weeks ago.” Carrie flashed her phone at him, the lock screen a photo of a mesmerized Franny reaching towards a cupcake with a single lit candle. She’d hesitated before changing her lock screen, previously one of the default wallpapers that came with her iPhone, not wanting to seem like the kind of woman who commented on recipes online with a screen name like FrannysMama45. But countless other mothers had given her their unsolicited opinions that aggressive photo sharing was a rite of passage, so she figured it was an obligation of sorts. Plus, Maggie sent out a Christmas card last year featuring Josie, Ruby, and Franny, so the very least Carrie could do was to make a photo of Franny her phone wallpaper, regardless of the weird performative aspects of it all. 

“She looks like you,” Jonas insisted, cradling her phone in his hand to get a better look. 

“Really?” Carrie frowned. She rarely heard that from people, although granted, she often spaced out during discussions like this so she could ignore questions about Franny’s father and blame it on mom brain. The red hair was always the first thing she saw. She’d hoped that would be old news by now, but it hadn’t happened yet.

“You have the same smile,” Jonas said definitively. 

“Thanks,” she responded awkwardly at the not-exactly-a-compliment, still not entirely confident about her identity as a mother, about her role in creating the grinning little girl in her phone background. “So anyway, that’s where I have to be later.”

“Maybe another time,” he offered, an open question, a gently outstretched hand.

“Another time,” she agreed, deciding after a second that keeping the option open was a good decision.

At Nina’s mention of Jonas, Carrie freezes in the doorway of her office. “Did he say what he wanted?”

“I think he just wanted you to sign something, security contracts for the next few public events we have planned.”

“Okay, I’ll go find him,” Carrie says, trying to keep the dumb extra note of happiness out of her voice. 

She’s still not sure about where a drink with Jonas would lead, but something about attending mass that morning had soothed the low-grade panic that was constantly in the back of her mind ever since she got to Berlin: panic that leaving behind the CIA was the biggest mistake she could possibly make, that people would think she was too harsh, too calculated, too robotic for a non-profit, that she could never pass for a normal mother with a normal 9 to 5 job and a daughter she loved. Frankly she’s surprised at herself for being interested in Jonas, for being intrigued by the simplicity she would have found endlessly boring even a few months ago, but as long as she hasn’t been called out as a fraud, she wants to capitalize on her opportunity. If she appears to other people as someone who is a capable mother and fits in at work and can handle a workplace romance with a socially acceptable degree of emotional investment, shouldn’t she accept it at face value? 

She knocks on the door jamb to Jonas’s office, where he’s typing away at his computer. He’s such a good typist that he doesn’t have to look at the keyboard. Of course.

“Hi,” she interrupts his email or brief or contract. “Nina said you wanted to see me?”

“Yes,” he smiles in greeting. “I need to send these final contracts this afternoon, so you just need to sign in a couple places.” He rummages in his desk drawer for a red well folder with the papers, her signature lines marked with plastic Post-It arrows. She scribbles her name and returns everything to the folder.

“Thanks,” he says.

“Uh, also, I’ve been thinking,” Carrie hedges, forcing herself to say it before she loses her nerve. “Is that offer for drinks still on the table? Maybe tomorrow night?”

+++++

As the weather grows colder and the grayer and Carrie finds herself searching for warmth, she returns to mass. She usually goes to a church about a twenty-minute walk from her apartment that offers masses in English. She’s hesitant to bring Franny with her at first, not wanting to risk the dirty looks that would inevitably come if she was fussy or whiny, but she has no other choice, recognizing the absurdity of paying for a babysitter while she sits in a pew for an hour. Carrie’s lucky most of the time, and Franny stays quiet, listening to the music with wide eyes and craning her neck to get a full view of the stained glass windows. 

The first time Carrie goes up for communion with Franny on her hip, she worries a little that Franny will be scared by the crowd and the unfamiliar priest, and rubs her back to soothe her. Franny seems relatively calm, leaning her head into Carrie’s shoulder and smiling at the occasional wave that seems to be automatic from young women in their twenties. Carrie accepts the host from the priest, this one a little younger than the priest at her neighborhood church but with the same wise, venerable air. He smiles at Franny afterwards and does the sign of the cross in front of her, Franny’s eyes following his hand with a contemplative expression that Carrie notices as Brody’s. 

Carrie’s knees feel a little weak as she walks back to her seat, the reminder of Brody a sensation she still reacts to physically. She kisses the top of Franny’s head, breathing in her clean shampoo scent to calm herself. 

“Did you like the priest?” she whispers into Franny’s hair. “He gave you a blessing.”

Christmas decorations go up around the city at the beginning of December, and the church itself turns into a winter wonderland with soft garlands and soft white twinkle lights. Jonas has started staying over a couple nights a week, a development that Carrie is still getting used to. She feels a little strange waking up with someone else in her bed, but mostly it’s nice. It’s functional. He cooks a full breakfast every morning and is great with Franny, and even brings her some German picture books left over from when his own son was her age. 

There’s something surreal about going on long, magically-lit walks with her seemingly perfect lawyer boyfriend, who doesn’t even mind that her one-year-old joins them in her stroller, bundled in a puffy down bodysuit. It’s compounded by the fact that it’s Christmastime, a time of year she’s used to feeling anxious; as a kid, her father planned ambitious Christmas Eve meals that always ended up going wrong in some absurd way. Her dad’s theatrics would be funny now, but they usually meant that the largely inedible dinner wasn’t ready until 10pm, at which point her parents were barely speaking to each other. Her mother used to go to sleep right after dinner, which as a very young kid Carrie thought was to send some signal to Santa. When she got a little older she figured it was actually so she could wrap her and Maggie’s presents, and a few years later she finally realized it was because her mother had consumed an entire bottle of wine.

Even after Christmases only consisted of Carrie, Maggie, and their dad, Maggie would inevitably try too hard to make everything seem perfect, which meant it was clear to anyone who knew her that she might start crying at any moment from the stress. Her only genuinely enjoyable Christmas seasons were the ones where she’d claimed too much work and showed up at Maggie’s house for only an hour or two on Christmas day. 

In Berlin, maybe it’s a combination of the new relationship and the knowledge that she’s free of family obligation being an ocean away, but she feels happy, no qualifiers, the way normal people probably do every year at Christmas.

One Sunday, Carrie arrives at church for a later mass than usual, since she couldn’t bear to kick Jonas out of bed for her typical 9am. She sees small groups of people gathered inside the lobby, which is unusual. She frowns in thought, trying to remember if she has the time right. She checks her watch: 10:59am, right on time for the 11:00 mass. A harried-looking woman in a dark blue suit comes up to Carrie and Franny, scanning a list in her hand.

“Are you going to change her clothes before the ceremony?” this woman asks Carrie. “We’re almost out of time.”

“Um, I think I got the time wrong,” Carrie answers slowly, trying to figure out what’s going on. “I just wanted to go to mass. What ceremony are you talking about?” 

“This is a baptism,” the woman explains. “We usually group families together in December because it gets so busy. I thought you and your daughter were here for that.”

Carrie takes a closer look around her and notices the small groups are families, all holding babies around Franny’s age or a little younger, most of whom are dressed in white outfits. 

“I see,” she nods. “We’re in the wrong place then!” 

The woman from the parish smiles at her, probably grateful that she doesn’t have to corral yet another family into the waiting group. She’s turning to walk away when Carrie stops her. She hadn’t ever seriously considered baptizing Franny; it just wasn’t a priority, and the extra hurdle of figuring out how to do it in a foreign country made it seem not worth the effort. But going to church has been so helpful for the sense of calm it brings her, an hour-long moratorium on the voices swirling around in her head screaming that she’s done too many terrible things to be worthy of happiness. And if she can do something to offer Franny that same reprieve as she gets older, she wants to give her daughter the opportunity. It took Carrie a long time to feel the pull of church on her own terms, but maybe if she presents it to Franny as a space to think and reflect, she’ll understand the draw too.

“Wait a minute,” Carrie says. “Can you tell me how baptism is done here? Can anyone baptize their child here? Are there any spots open soon?”

“It’s actually easiest to get it done during this time of year,” she explains. “We typically have baptism masses once or twice a week, but we add as many families as the priest is willing to take. Are you interested?”

“I hadn’t really considered it, but now I think I am. Do you have any spots open in the next two weeks?”

It turns out that there’s an opening the following Sunday, which Carrie signs Franny up for on the spot. 

When he hears about the baptism, Jonas insists on coming, saying he wants to be there for her if her family can’t be around. Carrie lets him assume that the trans-Atlantic flight is the barrier stopping Maggie and her daughters from being there, instead of the fact that she hasn’t even told Maggie she’s been going to church. She’s not sure how to justify it after the years Maggie spent dragging her kicking and screaming to the car on Sunday mornings, and even though Maggie’s mostly grown out of the holier-than-thou attitude that made Carrie want to smack her constantly, she doesn’t want Maggie judging her again for not adhering to the rules to the letter.

He’s actually hugely helpful, since Carrie has no idea where to buy the ornate white dress that she saw all the babies wearing last weekend. Based on instructions from his sister, he directs her to a rarely-frequented corner of a department store that has white attire for baptisms and first communions.

The church is quieter when Carrie and Jonas arrive with Franny than it was when Carrie stumbled upon the first baptism; there are only three other families waiting around. The downside of the quick mass is that the small group feels obligated to make small talk in the lobby while the priest is setting up the readings and the holy water. Franny gets fussy with all the strangers looking at her and speaking to her like she’s six months younger than she is, and Jonas eventually takes her for a walk around the block. 

“He’s such a good dad,” coos a mom standing behind Carrie, holding a baby who is trying with all his might to climb out of her arms.

“Oh, um,” Carrie chuckles. “He’s actually not the dad. But he is good with her,” she trails off awkwardly. 

“Are you sure?” This woman won’t leave her alone. “They look so alike, with that hair!”

What the fuck? Is she _sure_? Carrie thought Europeans were supposed to be more reserved about personal questions. “Quite sure!” Carrie shoots back, fakely sweet but with the same inflection she’d use to say _fuck you,_ as she looks around desperately for Jonas and Franny. The ceremony is going to start any minute, and she can’t get stuck next to this woman, who is definitely the kind of person who would make annoying off-handed comments throughout.

Jonas and Franny come in just then, and Carrie runs to them gratefully. Franny reaches out for Carrie and Jonas hands her off, gently removing her tiny coat. 

“Hi, my love,” Carrie whispers as Franny wraps her arms around her neck. “Are you ready?”

The priest opens the doors just then and invites them all in to stand by the baptismal font. He asks if anyone would like to go first and Carrie puts her hand up immediately, without doing the customary polite glance around her. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Jonas smirking at her American exuberance, but she’s eager to get this done while Franny is calm. 

“You know we can’t leave early even if Franny gets baptized first,” he whispers as they make their way up to the front of the group. 

“Shut up,” she hisses back as she tries to stop a laugh from bubbling up. 

The priest’s stoic face calms her down. “Can we begin?” he asks.

“Yes,” Carrie nods solemnly, adjusting Franny so she sits on her left hip. 

The priest begins to read from his prayer book. Franny seems to discern that this is an important moment and she listens calmly. Carrie is grateful for that, but she’s not nearly as calm; she still can’t get that horrible woman’s voice out of her head asking if she’s sure who Franny’s father is. She’d frankly love it if she were a little less sure that Franny’s father died a traitor and a terrorist to most of the world, if there were even a sliver of doubt that would stop her from having nightmares about running into Dana Brody while grocery shopping with Franny. She forces herself to focus on the priest’s words about cleansing original sin, knowing that Franny was born with more sin to bear than most: her father’s not-suicide tape aired across every news network for weeks and his hanging a public celebration.

When the time comes for the actual cleansing, Carrie weaves her way to the baptismal font as Franny starts to look concerned. She startles as the priest rinses her forehead with holy water, looking at Carrie for comfort. Before Franny can start crying in earnest, Carrie lifts her up and rubs her back slowly, with Jonas watching warily to gauge Franny’s reaction. 

“It’s okay,” Carrie whispers. “You did such a good job.” 

As the priest begins the final portion of the ceremony, Carrie follows Franny’s gaze up to the overhead statue of Jesus on the cross and closes her eyes, Brody’s body swinging from a crane behind her eyelids as the flashback that haunted every night of her second and third trimesters makes an unwelcome appearance.

+++++

Hebrews 12:3-4 _“Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.”_

It takes Carrie a few months to slow down enough to truly enjoy Berlin. She’s been in fight-or-flight mode for the past year, living in war zones, and she has to train her body to release that tension. Compared to the CIA, working at the Düring Foundation is peaceful. She doesn’t have to be on call at all hours of the day, she doesn’t carry a gun around just in case of emergency, and she doesn’t fall asleep thinking about drone strikes. 

Even though she realizes her perspective is warped, she can’t help questioning whether her job at the foundation is worthy of leaving the CIA. Her favorite part of being a case officer was getting intelligence that allowed her to link together the big picture, to understand where the US stood in relation to its allies, where the Taliban was going to strike next, if government officials in Afghanistan would seriously entertain the possibility of a ceasefire. Otto wants to do good work with his foundation, aimed mostly at relocating refugees seeking asylum, but he’s so focused on getting good press that he picks events to go to based on the news outlets in attendance and how many friendly reporters he can plant in the crowd.

At first, the pace and the manufactured PR machine leave her restless, the hyperactivity verging on mania that’s now a permanent part of her personality telling her she made a grave mistake. Laura talks a big game about exposing corrupt power structures and giving the German people the information they deserve, but she still has to play the media game, packaging up her vigilante journalism into the perfect format for clicks and shares and search engine optimization. 

When Otto calls her out that winter for not appearing terribly excited about her work, she passes it off as an adjustment period; she uses some of the corporate buzzwords she’s gotten used to hearing, says she’s looking forward to the next year’s growth potential, or something. She hadn’t imagined that a non-profit would feel so sterile, but she misses the human contact she had as a case officer, the danger of recruiting a new asset, the challenge of figuring out exactly how to pressure a source into doing what she wanted. 

“Otto yelled at me today for not being appropriately exuberant at work,” Carrie complains to Jonas that night as they get into bed. 

“Yell? He would never actually yell at you. He’s always talking about your _unique perspective_ ,” Jonas mocks. “Sometimes I think he’s jealous of us.”

“Jealous of what, of us being together? He is not. That’s insane.”

Jonas pauses for a second before deciding to voice his thoughts aloud. He does that often, so deliberate, so measured. “He actually asked me about you a couple days ago.” 

“Asked you what?” Carrie replies sharply. “Why am I just hearing about this?”

“I didn’t tell you because it was a pretty strange thing for him to do, and I didn’t want you to feel awkward.”

Carrie searches his face for signs that he’s lying, but he’s as open and honest as ever. “Okay,” she relents. “But what did he want to know?”

“I think exactly what he talked to you about, if you’re enjoying the job, and what you felt like you were missing, so he could give it to you.” 

“Why would he talk to you before me?” Carrie is still unsettled that Otto would go behind her back. 

“He implied that I had good insight into what you were thinking. Which I do, right?” he smiles cheesily. 

“Yes, fine, you do,” Carrie grants with a wave of her arm.

“And he also seemed concerned that you wouldn’t answer him honestly.”

“Why ever would he think that?” Carrie grumbles sarcastically.

“All I told him was that you hadn’t said anything to me, and that he’d have to ask you himself if he wanted real answers. Or your manufactured answer, as the case may be.”

“Thanks for not selling me out.” He’s perfect, as always.

“You’re welcome.” He kisses her temple. “But I do agree with him, you haven’t seemed too happy at work lately.”

“I’m not unhappy exactly,” Carrie starts, trying to work out her feelings for herself. “I just have to get used to the media-facing part of it, I think. I pictured us working more with individual refugees or specific camps, so we could see the people we’re supposed to be helping.”

Jonas hums in affirmation. Always the active listener.

“I guess the stakes just feel low to me.”

“Is that surprising? After coming from the CIA?” he smiles at her naiveté. 

“I’ll get used to it. And I know it’s healthier this way. I’m just used to having more responsibility.” She laughs. “Not to sound like a dick or anything.” 

Jonas seems unsure about her breezy conclusion, but he accepts it for the time being. “Okay,” he nods. “But you can talk to me if anything changes.”

“I know, that’s why you’re so great.” Carrie kisses him loudly to punctuate her point.

She’s used to having more responsibility, that’s true, but responsibility is such a sanitized word for it. She misses the buzz of full-body anxiety that comes with holding an asset’s life in her hands, the weight of the knowledge that she’s the person in the world best equipped to find and kill a terrorist like Abu Nazir: facing mortal peril is actually energizing for Carrie, the feeling that she’s given everything she can possibly offer to her job and to her country. 

She remembers the night she arrived at Saul’s house after luring Javadi’s men to recruit her, five hours into a marathon journey to make sure she wasn’t being tailed. Saul was so happy with her, and even through her terror and exhaustion she’d been proud of herself, proud that she’d come dangerously close to a full breakdown but stopped herself from teetering over the edge. Mira had been so protective of her that night, making her tea and leftovers from dinner, and rubbing her back quietly while glaring at Saul.

Carrie relishes the sacrifice, is what she’ll admit to herself but never to anyone else; only after she’s given herself up entirely does she feel worthy. Maybe she absorbed as much of the church’s teachings as Maggie did, but in a different way: instead of finding a roadmap for good works and duty to family, Carrie internalized the horror of the crucifixion. Jesus thought the only way to eliminate sin was to offer himself up to death, and Carrie nodded calmly at that and went on to throw herself repeatedly at Saul’s feet. It’s a masochistic way of living, to be sure, but the best victories come only after being kicked through the dirt. Right?

+++++

Proverbs 28:13 _“Whoever conceals their sins does not prosper, but the one who confesses and renounces them finds mercy.”_

Jonas is clearly curious about her former life in the CIA, but lies in wait for a while before he starts asking questions. He knows she’s worked both in the US and abroad, but she’s been purposefully vague about the timeline of her work in Kabul and Islamabad, wanting to avoid questions about how Franny fits in. She messes up one afternoon though, mentioning something about “last year” in Kabul, and Jonas starts, turning on the couch to face her, lowering the volume on the TV. 

“Wait, you were in Kabul last year?”

She nods, trying to anticipate his angle. He sits for a second, probably trying to do the math in his head.

“So were you there while you were pregnant?” he asks.

Carrie weighs her options quickly; she could lie, but that would get complicated trying to back-date everything. He also knows she was present during Sandy Bachman’s murder, so if he really wanted to, he could Google the news stories and see that it happened only nine months ago.

“No,” she admits. “I didn’t start until after Franny was born.” Anticipating his next question, she adds, “The CIA doesn’t let anyone bring dependents to an active war zone. So Franny stayed with Maggie while I was away.”

“So you were in Afghanistan and then Pakistan afterwards?” He’s trying to understand the specifics. 

“I was only in Pakistan for a couple months, but yes.” She hasn’t talked much about Islamabad with anyone, and she’s still a little too fucked up to consider doing so with Jonas, even in the removed, unspecific way she has to discuss classified missions with civilians.

“So when did you start work in Afghanistan? Franny would have been how old?”

She laughs defensively. “So many questions tonight!”

“I’m just curious,” he responds calmly, but doesn’t take back the question.

“She was about six weeks old. As soon as my C-section scar healed, I was off.” Carrie phrases it as a joke, but it’s the truth – she’d had to delay her flight to Kabul because her OB didn’t clear her at her one-month postpartum visit.

Jonas’s eyes harden for a fraction of a second, and Carrie can tell she was a little too honest. 

“What?” she challenges, sitting up straight. “You think I’m a bad mother?”

He puts his hands up in surrender. “I didn’t even say anything.”

“I saw your face.”

“I’m just processing what you told me. I swear.”

“Maggie took care of her the whole time I was overseas,” she explains. “Franny had everything she needed.” 

“I’m sure she did a great job.”

Of course he’s sure Maggie did a great job, respected by people she hasn’t even met. “But?” she eggs him on.

“But nothing. I just didn’t know that you left Franny with Maggie.”

Even though she’s asking for it, she gets defensive at the word _left._ “I didn’t leave her anywhere. I wasn’t allowed to take her with me to Afghanistan.” She conveniently keeps quiet about Istanbul, even though she can see Maggie spluttering in her mind’s eye. “I was asked to do an important job, I couldn’t just say no.” 

“I know. You just seem so happy to be here with her now,” Jonas says hurriedly. “It’s so dangerous over there, and you won’t let Otto go anywhere near an active war zone, so I just didn’t think you were the kind of mom who would –” He stops.

“And what kind of mom am I, exactly? Since you seem to consider yourself an expert?”

“I don’t – you’re twisting my words,” he says desperately, clearly wishing he’d never started the conversation in the first place. 

“No I’m not.” Carrie keeps her voice level, falsely cheery. “I just want you to finish your sentence.” She can feel her heart beating like it’s trying to struggle its way out of her chest. 

He takes a deep breath to collect his thoughts. “Not all parents are with their children all the time. I don’t live with my son.”

Carrie nods smugly. “I wasn’t going to say it, but you did bring it up. Would you have had the same reaction if I were a man and had to go work in the Middle East?”

Jonas sighs in defeat. “Probably not.”

“So you admit you did judge me for it.”

“Carrie.” She knows she’s testing the depths of his patience, but this man still hasn’t yelled at her. His voice gets softer instead: “Is it possible that _you_ feel like you left Franny?”

By the grace of God, Franny wakes up from her nap just then. Carrie can hear her soft calls from her bedroom. “Mama?”

“Nope, it’s not possible! Thanks for the therapy, though,” she says in as withering a voice as she can muster. “My daughter needs me now.”

She stalks away to get Franny, who is smiling at her between the slats of her crib. “Hi, honey,” she whispers, lifting her up. “How’d you sleep?” She cuddles Franny’s warm body to her. 

Carrie can see Jonas flipping channels in the living room, the volume turned a little louder than necessary out of spite. She decides to take the cowardly way out and hide with Franny for a while. “Do you want to play?” she asks, lowering Franny down to the floor and pulling out her favorite barnyard animal puzzle. Franny nods excitedly and starts pulling all the animals out of their little nooks.

After Franny has eaten dinner and taken a bath, Carrie sets her up in the living room with her favorite books, leaving her free to flip through the pictures dozens of times. Jonas is in the kitchen cooking an adult dinner, and Carrie sidles up to him as he’s stirring some veggies around in a frying pan, a dish towel thrown over his shoulder.

“Hi,” she starts. “What are you cooking?”

“Stir fry,” he answers, keeping his eyes on the pan. 

“It looks really good.”

“Thanks,” he grunts, but looks up at her.

Carrie takes a breath. “I’m sorry about earlier. Thanks for sticking around.”

“I’m sorry for making you think I was judging your mothering choices.”

She puts her hand on his arm to stop him. “No, it’s fine. I know I was being a monster.”

He raises his eyebrows in a _you said it, not me_ expression. “Now that I know you’re sensitive about that time in your life, I’ll let you be. It’s okay.” 

Carrie opens her mouth to argue his point – she doesn’t want him to walk on eggshells around her, but if it gets him off her back, she’s fine with it. She wraps her arms around his waist instead and gives him a soft kiss on the cheek. 

“Thanks,” she says simply. “Do you need help with dinner?”

By 8pm, Franny is finally asleep, after refusing to go down without a total of two books read to her by Carrie and four read by Jonas. Carrie is sprawled on her bed in sleep shorts and a t-shirt, scrolling through her work email when Jonas finally walks in and collapses on the bed next to her.

“Your daughter is a piece of work,” he groans.

“I know,” Carrie agrees lovingly as she puts her phone on the bedside table. “She really likes having you around, though. When she doesn’t see you for a few days she starts asking where ‘Yo-Nah’ is.”

Jonas smiles tiredly. 

“And I love seeing the two of you together. You are so unbelievably good with her.”

“Well, I do have a kid of my own.”

“No, I mean good in general. You’re so patient and happy with her, all the time. You’re like a saint, almost. I should nominate you to be canonized.”

He rolls his eyes in reply. “I don’t think that’s how sainthood works.”

“Whatever,” she laughs. “You’re almost perfect. Perfect boyfriend, perfect lawyer…”

“Shush,” he says, placing a kiss on her shoulder. “I’m not a saint.”

“Really?” she challenges. “Then prove it.”

He smiles at the competitive edge in her voice, turning his head to kiss her jaw. “Fine.”

He pins her arms to the duvet at shoulder height and kisses her deeply, laughing as she squirms against him, wanting to bury her hands in his hair or scratch lightly down his back. He starts with her exposed stomach, kissing up to the hem of her t-shirt and lifting it slowly with his teeth. She gasps as he bites at her nipple through her shirt, then decides to do away with it altogether.

“Arms up,” he commands, and Carrie grins as he pulls her shirt over her head. He anchors her arms again as he kisses down her torso, biting at the sensitive spot right above her hip bone until her leg twitches, her whole body buzzing with adrenaline. 

“I’m going to kick you,” she warns. 

He ignores her and tugs at the waistband of her shorts. She tries to help him pull them off, but he scowls at her. 

“No,” he says. “Stay where you are.” 

She settles down for good, ready to play his game. Once Jonas gets all her clothes off, he spreads her legs open and drags her closer to him. He sucks at her clit, hard, and she groans in pleasure, digging her heel in between his shoulder blades to keep him there.

“Keep doing that,” she says breathlessly. 

He slips a finger inside her instead, lazily dragging it in and out, his mouth on her inner thigh. He slowly adds a second finger without changing his pace, even as she thrusts her hips towards him. He returns his mouth to her clit, drawing slow circles with his tongue, not using nearly enough friction. She whines loudly, wordlessly, and he crooks his fingers inside her as a consolation, just short of the spot he knows makes her moan. 

“Stop being such a tease,” she says. “It’s not funny.” Her words have no bite because she’s breathing so heavily, partly from frustration and partly from the warmth that’s building in the pit of her stomach, good but not good enough. 

“Oh? It’s not?” he asks breezily. “Okay, then. I can stop.” 

And he does just that, gets up off the bed with his fingers still wet from her, grinning. He’s still fully dressed and she’s lying there with her legs spread wide, pouting. 

“That’s not what I meant!” she yells with her toes curled in frustration as he turns to leave the room. 

“Not a saint after all, am I?” he smirks. 

They stare at each other in a challenge. “I have a vibrator in the drawer right here, you know.” Carrie tries to regain just an ounce of control. “I don’t need you.” 

“Sounds like you’re all set then,” he responds. “I’m going to take a shower.” 

Carrie throws her t-shirt after his retreating frame but misses. She can tell by the way his shoulders are shaking that he’s laughing. But she’s not one to let anyone else have the last word, so she digs around in her bedside table for the vibrator she hasn’t needed in months, sighing happily as it buzzes to life.

As the week wears on, Carrie can’t get her fight with Jonas out of her head. She does think he was judging her parenting choices, but that’s not really the reason why she was so upset. She’s been struggling ever since she got to Berlin about how to talk about Franny’s stay with Maggie, and she’s kept quiet about it almost entirely until now. She doesn’t regret taking the position as station chief; it’s a job she’d always wanted, and the ebb-and-flow political nature of the agency meant she had to grab it while it was available. Lockhart certainly wouldn’t have waited for her to take a real maternity leave. But she does feel guilty about it, when Franny learns a new word or decides on a new favorite food, and Carrie sees how quickly time passes and how much she missed out on while she was gone. Or when Franny won’t stop crying or refuses to go down for a nap, Carrie realizes the enormity of what Maggie did for her, especially with two other girls in the house.

In church the next Sunday, Carrie and Franny arrive early so that Carrie has time to sit and think before mass starts. She’s still not big on direct prayer, since she feels silly putting her worries into words – _Dear God, I sinned by dumping my kid with my sister while I flew around the world to put my life in danger on a daily basis, please forgive me, many thanks_ – but the church atmosphere is soothing and helps her think. Franny is good this week, looking around quietly at all the lights and flowers and occasionally scribbling on a parish bulletin with crayons. Her hair has just gotten long enough to fit into a ponytail, which she usually shakes out in an hour or so, but for now it still looks neat and adorable.

She’s been questioning every choice she made with Franny over the past few days, during which even a stranger’s quizzical look at the mittens she was wearing would send Carrie into a spiral with the words _unfit mother unfit mother unfit mother_ running through her head. Jonas was obviously right when he suggested she feels like she left Franny, but he doesn’t understand why she’s so broken up about it: she and Franny are together now, so shouldn’t everything be fine? But Carrie can’t stop thinking about her horrible trip to see her mother last summer, and the dawning realization that she left to start an entirely new family. It wasn’t that she couldn’t stand Carrie’s father, or couldn’t deal with his bipolar disorder, or even that she was tired of the responsibility of being a mother. She just didn’t want to mother Carrie specifically.

And so Carrie took Franny and moved across the Atlantic so that no one could say she didn’t want to raise her daughter, so Franny wouldn’t have to grow up wondering what shitty indefensible reason her mother had for leaving. Maybe all the horror in Islamabad was her penance for leaving when she didn’t have to, when the job in Istanbul was still an option, but then why does she feel like she still has to make up for it? Weren’t the hallucinations and the hostage negotiations and the murder of her employees by the Taliban enough retribution? But as the priest reminds her during mass, God only forgives sinners who repent. Maybe it’s not enough to be with Franny now if she doesn’t admit she was at fault. If she doesn’t admit that yes, her postpartum hormones certainly had an overlarge say in her decision-making, but she did have options other than moving straight to Afghanistan and checking on her daughter via Maggie once a week. That she was checked out emotionally for Franny’s first nine months, no matter how much she wanted to love her. And above all, that she wants to make up for it.

Carrie calls Jonas as soon as she arrives home, to get the confession over with. 

“Hey,” she says when he answers the phone. “I just wanted to say that you were right last weekend about Franny. I do feel like I left her.” 

“Okay,” Jonas answers slowly, probably deciding how best to respond without getting yelled at. “Thanks for telling me.” 

“I had good reasons for going.” She says this as much for her own benefit as his. 

“I know you did.”

“But I still feel guilty about it, like it makes me less of a mother somehow.”

“Carrie. You know that’s not true, right?”

“Maybe it’s not, but I still think about it all the time.” She laughs at the impact of her Catholic upbringing: it didn’t stop her from sinning, but she still carries the guilt around with her like an extra layer of clothing. 

+++++

1 Corinthians 15:35-37 _“Someone will ask, ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?’ How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body which is to be.”_

Maggie schedules a Skype call with Carrie for her birthday in April. 

“Hi Aunt Carrie!” Ruby and Josie crowd around the camera excitedly. “Happy birthday!” 

“Hi, you guys!” Carrie waves at their tiny faces on her laptop screen. “I miss you.”

They shove each other around to determine who gets to sit on the other comfy chair opposite the laptop; Maggie has obviously taken the first one for herself. They end up sharing, with Josie slightly squished under Ruby, because as the oldest she refuses to be on the bottom. Bill calls out a quick hello from the background, but doesn’t stay long because he’s leaving to play golf. Carrie’s happy to hear that, actually, since she’s never really in the mood to make small talk with him. 

“Happy birthday,” Maggie’s amused voice cuts in. “We haven’t talked to you in awhile, how are you and Franny doing?” 

“Wait!” Ruby jumps up and runs to the coffee table in the living room, coming back with a gray t-shirt. “I meant to wear this to show you. I got a new Princeton shirt.”

“I love it,” Carrie smiles. “I have a very similar one.” 

Ruby’s spent the past year talking about how much she wants to go to Princeton just like Carrie, and she plans on applying early action in the fall. She turns to Maggie just then, her eyes lighting up; it looks natural, but Carrie’s sure she’s planned the ambush that comes out of her mouth.

“For my birthday, can I go visit Aunt Carrie in Berlin?” she asks, hands folded in mock prayer. 

“If Ruby gets to go to Germany, I want to go too!” Josie insists. 

“You should all come!” Carrie says excitedly. “I’d love to show you around.”

Maggie just chuckles and shakes her head. “You weren’t nearly this happy when you heard that we’re going to Italy next summer for your father’s work.”

“Yeah, but that’s so far from now, and it’s for dad’s boring treasury job,” Ruby says. She turns her head to whisper to Josie, “And I won’t get to meet Aunt Carrie’s hot boyfriend in Italy.”

“I heard that!” Carrie calls, her heart suddenly aching at the distance between her laptop and theirs.

“What’d you hear?” Jonas strolls into the living room holding Franny. 

“Nothing!” Ruby shrieks, trying to hide behind the Princeton t-shirt she’s still holding. 

“Hi everyone,” he adds. Carrie can see Ruby clutch Josie’s arm as he pokes his head into the screen. “I brought Franny so she could see you all.”

Carrie takes her daughter on her lap and bounces her slightly. 

“Can you say hi to Aunt Maggie and your cousins?” she asks. 

Franny stares at the laptop, a little confused, and eventually gives a small wave. Carrie’s actually pretty smug that her kid isn’t so screen-obsessed that she understands video chatting at one and a half.

“Ruby was just asking if she could come visit,” Carrie fills Jonas in. “Maybe for her birthday over the summer?” She directs this last part at Maggie. 

“Josie was asking too!” Josie pipes up. 

“What if we skip Myrtle Beach and go to Germany instead?” Ruby strategizes. “Dad’s the only one who likes it there anyway.”

“I’ll talk to your father later,” Maggie concedes, beaten.

“Really?” Ruby can’t believe her luck. 

“I’m not making any promises. But I will talk to him.”

Jonas settles next to Carrie and Franny on the couch. He’s good at showing that he cares about Carrie’s family, asking Maggie about work and Ruby and Josie about school and sports. He slips in more comfortably than Carrie could ever imagine being with his sister, who is nice enough but definitely more type-A than Jonas, and Carrie would describe their relationship as cordial at best, not casual. She’d been so nervous the first time she introduced Jonas to Maggie, even just over Skype, after realizing that she hadn’t introduced a guy to her family since college. Unsurprisingly, he’d exceeded expectations by recalling many of the more esoteric details Carrie had provided him about Maggie, like her love of cooking competition shows, especially the ones with children.

Maggie and Jonas take a couple minutes to catch up politely, before Josie cuts in to tell Carrie all about the political action group her history teacher is organizing. An hour passes quickly, with Franny quickly crawling down from Carrie’s lap to play in the living room. Eventually, Maggie has to take Josie to her lacrosse game, so everyone says loud and heartfelt goodbyes, with Maggie promising to keep Carrie updated about a summer trip to Germany.

Carrie and Franny go to church for Easter the next Sunday. Carrie forgets to budget extra time for the holiday, so they have to share a pew with another family because the mass is so crowded. The gospel, of course, is about Jesus’ resurrection, a story Carrie usually doesn’t find particularly moving because she’s heard variants of the same story her whole life: suffered, died, was buried, and on the third day he rose again. Today, though, she focuses on the sheer joy of the resurrection. This was the final test for the non-believers; the very fact of life is a miracle on its own, made even more impressive by the suffering and horror of the crucifixion three days earlier. 

Likewise, as Carrie reflects on her life in Berlin, so vastly different from the single-track existence she was used to in the States, she starts to believe that it’s an achievement to be proud of. Maybe turning her back on her old life was a net positive, admirable, even, given the lengths to which she had to go to build it back up again afterwards.

When she first moved to Berlin, Carrie struggled to understand what her life with Franny would look like. The only motherhood role model she had to reference was Maggie, who had her babies like clockwork two years apart when she was in med school, reasoning that she didn’t want to fall behind taking maternity leave during her residency. She also set her hours once she started practicing so she would always be able to get Ruby and Josie up in the morning; there was a deliberateness to her scheduling that always made them the focus. In contrast to Maggie, who decided on a specialty in family medicine for its predictable hours, Carrie always thought of her work as a calling more than a job, and even up through the last days of her pregnancy she wasn’t sure how a baby would fit into that. 

But she’s slowly learning that there’s no such thing as a model mother, and that even the most careful planning and research means nothing to a one-year-old, so she should stop comparing herself to mothers on the street, listing all the reasons in her head why she’s inferior. She had to forget all of the well-intentioned examples Maggie set for her – there was absolutely no way she was attending a Mommy & Me swim class – and learn to breathe through the paralyzing fear of reproach, from Maggie, from Jonas, from all the parents who seemed to just be wired better than she was. She took advice from her sister only as she saw fit, added in Mira’s gentle open arms she always swore she’d replicate one day, and trained herself to be a mother she both respected and recognized in the mirror.

Maggie calls her later that evening to wish her a happy Easter and make tentative plans for a family visit in June, before Ruby and Josie’s summer activities start. Carrie’s genuinely excited about showing them around the city, and she finally feels like she’s built a life that would be interesting to an outsider. It’s not exactly the life she imagined for herself a year ago, and Carrie can already see Maggie’s smug reaction to the sheer ordinariness of it all, but it makes her happy. She walked away from the CIA and the recurring guilt trip that left her constantly trying to atone, and found in Berlin a sense of calm that she can only describe as mercy.


End file.
